Soul Saviors
by Artchic528
Summary: A teenage runaway with a cloudy past and nothing to lose, Kat Middleson trusts only herself, her best friend Casey and her secret love of horses. After being thrust into the mysterious world of Jorvik "for her own good", she soon comes across an unapproachable orphaned filly struggling to survive. Can the two help mend each others wounds and learn to trust the world again?
1. Prologue

_The ominously dark and cloudy skies overhead threatened to open up and begin pouring down rain on the wide expanse of the country side below it. The animals that resided in this expanse of forest and field and farmland all knew a serious storm was upon them. The winds had picked up, carrying the sweet cleansing smell of the rains toward them, and the air overhead crackled and rumbled with lightening and thunder._

 _Rabbits huddled deep into their burrows with their baby bunnies, birds hunkered down where ever they could find a bit of shelter to lessen their exposure to imminent winds and rains, foxes darted here and there to escape into their dens, and the deer grouped up to whether out the worst of the storm together._

 _Suddenly, from the fields beyond the deep forest most of the animals called home came a lone horse, a Haflinger mare. She had clearly been panicked by something and was running full tilt toward the forest. Her flanks were caked with dirt and mud and sweat all mixed together, and patches of her coat were missing. Her main and tail were a snarled mess, and her body was rail thin with one exception, her distended abdomen. She was very pregnant and due to foal at any time now. This poor mare had obviously been neglected and mistreated and now she was giving what little life and energy she had left to keeping her unborn foal alive._

 _"Leave her" Came a voice from the fields, "that ratty nag is of no use to me in that condition"._

 _Several men had gathered near the far end of the field, where farmland and eventually the village began. All but one, the one who had spoken, were wearing thick glasses and long heavy coats. The man who had spoken had white hair and was dressed in a neat black suit. He was clearly in charge._

 _Soon, they had all departed to take shelter from the coming storm, but this offered little comfort to the mare, who kept running at full speed deeper into the forest. She finally slowed down as the first fat drops of rain came pelting down and saw before what she had sought out. A sprawling village nestled deep in the forest, where the forest ended and the great mountains began._

 _Eventually she saw that which she had sought for so long, a woman who could she could communicate with, and who communicated with the great Druids, the guardians of the forest, mountains and fields beyond. She slowed to a trot and neighed at the woman, who had been running back from the cows, milk pail in hand, and eventually she took notice of this bedraggled, emaciated mare. Clearly the mare knew her, but there was no look of recognition on the woman's face. She just looked puzzled, shocked and saddened._

 _The mare then knew she had done all she could to secure her unborn foal's life. She had come to the fabled village of hope. Suddenly, exhaustion took hold of her and she found she could no longer stand. Weakened by so much hunger and neglect and the long run to get to this village, she collapsed on the spot as the woman shouted over the raging storm for help from her druid friends._


	2. Chapter 1

_KA-THUNK!_

Kat Middleson's eyes flew wide open and she sat bolt upright. After blinking for a few times, the momentary confusion and disorientation passing, she realized that the noise that had awoken her was only the book that she had been reading before she fell asleep falling to the floor. She stretched a bit and took in the unfamiliar surroundings and allowed her mind, which was still very much groggy with sleep, to slowly grind into action. span style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanShe slowly began to remember why she was here, and where "here" was.

 _That's right_ , she thought to herself, _I ran away from that damn awful foster place that the CPS idiots stuck me in. I'm at Casey's place now._

Casey was Kat's best friend and the only other person in the world she completely trusted. They met a while back in one of the many foster homes Kat had been bounced around through. She had been 10 at the time, and he 12. Somehow, despite the little time they were together there, they had connected, and forged a deep lasting bond. Despite what others might think, and not that she cared any, the bond wasn't romantic in any way. She saw him as a confidant, best friend and nothing more. All too soon, He had been adopted out and now lived in the basement of a farmhouse owned by a 60-something couple. According to Casey, they had a couple of biological kids who had since grown up and moved out, and they felt the house was too empty. So, to fill this void, they had decided to adopt. That was 4 years ago and now they were teenagers, 14 and 16 respectively.

Kat sighed inwardly, as to remain quiet and not raise any suspicion that she was in the basement. It wasn't as if that foster home she had run away from was all that terrible, not really. It was more or less the seven other foster children, most of them less than 10 years old, that seriously grated on her nerves. That and the house could never feel like home. Not that "home" was ever a thing with Kat. Her birth mother was a teenage runaway in L.A. that got in with a bad crowd, addicted to some gnarly drug or another, and got pregnant all before her 16th birthday. Eventually, the law caught up with her, and she wound up in jail. That was Kat's saving grace, because she was born shortly thereafter under the supervision of doctors. The ink hadn't had a chance to dry on her birth certificate before she was whisked away by CPS and put into the State of California's foster system. That's all Kat ever knew of her mother's life. She never even learned what her mother's name was.

Not that it mattered. At 15, she was done spending long hours wondering about her past and had decided all that mattered was making a future for herself. Nobody was going to do it for her because nobody ever cared enough about her to offer her help. The only person she knew she could depend on, besides Casey, was herself. Which is why she had run away from that god awful foster home in the middle of the night. She had walked to a nearby bus stop, rode it to L.A.'s Greyhound terminal, and hopped on a greyhound bus to a tiny rural farming town in Minnesota, whose name hardly anyone save the residents would know, Moriah. It took her three full days to get there, but it was worth it.

At Moriah's lone gas station where the bus had dropped her off and once again shrouded by the darkness of night, she called Casey's cell. She was unable to do anything more discrete, like texting, because she had no cellphone of her own. To her, it was another reason to run away. All the other kids her age had phones, tablets and computers. She didn't have anything at all. The unfairness of it all was just about unbearable.

Casey came to get her in his parent's beat up old Dodge Ram truck, and somehow, managed to sneak her into his basement bedroom without waking them up. The only place he could offer her to crash was the couch in the TV area of his basement bedroom. She gladly accepted and although she had intended to read quietly for a while, somehow fell asleep before she could finish a single paragraph.

Kat groaned inwardly as she bent down to retrieve the fallen book, a copy of _The Horse Whisperer_ (She always had a soft spot for all things horse related, though obviously only trusted Casey to such knowledge about herself). The couch wasn't the most comfortable piece of furniture in the world and her back was stiff and sore from the few hours she had slept on it. After determining that there were no sounds coming from upstairs, she quietly began stretching out the kinks in her back as best she could, then soundlessly placed her book on the worn coffee table in between the couch and the TV.

Then, she looked over at Casey's form on his bed, hardly detectable under a mound of blankets and sheets. If it weren't for the occasional soft snore, she might have not known he was even there. She smiled appreciatively at what he was risking by having her stow away here. After a moment, she got up from the couch, letting the quilt Casey lent to her to use fall carelessly onto the floor, and made her way to the single bathroom in the basement, fumbling around in the darkness. Needs must be met, after all.

Feeling a lot better after her bathroom excursion and managing to get back to the couch without making too much noise, she sank back down into the soft lumpy cushions, her mind now free to be deep in thought. She was trying to recall what exactly she had dreamed about before waking up. Something about a horse running in some woods, she was sure of that. Also, there was something about her due to give birth…. something about evil men…. or was it a corporation? She racked her mind trying to remember, but the more she tried to recall the dream, the more her memory of it seemed to dissolve away.

The house was still quiet in this early hour. So early was it, that the sun wasn't even up yet. Kat lay back down with the intention of going back to sleep, but despite her body still being tired, her mind was now wide awake. She had given up trying to recall her dream and was now filled with anxiety and dread upon being discovered by Casey's parents. What would they say when they discovered he had sneeked a teenage girl into his bedroom in the middle of the night? What would happen next after the shock wore off and the shouting began? Her stomach worked its way into knots just thinking about it all. Sleep was all but impossible now.

Since sleep was no longer an option and turning on the TV before her would only risk her being discovered, she turned her attention to her book sitting on the coffee table. Thinking it would be a good way to help ease her mind for the time being by losing herself in its pages, she reached over and picked it up. Leafing through the pages, she found her place and resumed reading, her senses slowly dissolving as she became enveloped in a tale of love, loss, healing and horses. Soon, she was totally engrossed and her nerves were all but forgotten for the time being.


End file.
